The Burning Land

THREE

The first thing I noticed was the cart.

It was enormous, big enough to carry the harvest from a dozen fields, but this wagon would never carry anything so mundane as sheaves of wheat. It had two thick axles and four solid wheels rimmed with iron. The wheels had been painted with a green cross on a white background. The sides of the cart were paneled, and each of the panels bore the image of a saint. There were Latin words carved into the top rails, but I never bothered to ask what they meant because I neither wanted to know nor needed to ask. They would be some Christian exhortation, and one of those is much like any other. The bed of the cart was mostly filled by woolsacks, presumably to protect the passengers from the jolting of the vehicle, while a well-cushioned chair stood with its high back against the driver’s bench. A striped sailcloth awning supported by four serpentine-carved poles had been erected over the whole gaudy contraption, and a wooden cross, like those placed on church gables, reared from one of the poles. Saints’ banners hung from the remaining three poles.

“A church on wheels?” I asked sourly.

“He can’t ride anymore,” Steapa told me gloomily.

Steapa was the commander of the royal bodyguard. He was a huge man, one of the few who were taller than me, and unremittingly fierce in battle. He was also unremittingly loyal to King Alfred. Steapa and I were friends, though we had started as enemies when I had been forced to fight him. It had been like attacking a mountain. Yet the two of us had survived that meeting, and there was no man I would rather have stood beside in a shield wall. “He can’t ride at all?” I asked.

“He does sometimes,” Steapa said, “but it hurts too much. He can hardly walk.”

“How many oxen drag this thing?” I asked, gesturing at the wagon.

“Six. He doesn’t like it, but he has to use it.”

We were in Æscengum, the burh built to protect Wintanceaster from the east. It was a small burh, nothing like the size of Wintanceaster or Lundene, and it protected a ford which crossed the River Wey, though why the ford needed protection was a mystery because the river could be easily crossed both north and south of Æscengum. Indeed, the town guarded nothing of importance, which was why I had argued against its fortification. Yet Alfred had insisted on making Æscengum into a burh because, years before, some half-crazed Christian mystic had supposedly restored a raped girl’s virginity at the place, and so it was a hallowed spot. Alfred had ordered a monastery built there, and Steapa told me the king was waiting in its church. “They’re talking,” he said bleakly, “but none of them knows what to do.”

“I thought you were waiting for Harald to attack you here?”

“I told them he wouldn’t,” Steapa said, “but what happens if he doesn’t?”

“We find Harald and kill the earsling, of course,” I said, gazing east to where new smoke pyres betrayed where Harald’s men were plundering new villages.

Steapa gestured at Skade. “Who’s she?”

“Harald’s whore,” I said, loud enough for Skade to hear, though her face showed no change from her customary haughty expression. “She tortured a man called Edwulf,” I explained, “trying to get him to reveal where he’d buried his gold.”

“I know Edwulf,” Steapa said, “he eats and drinks his gold.”

“He did,” I said, “but he’s dead now.” Edwulf had died before we left his estate.

Steapa held out a hand to take my swords. The monastery was serving this day as Alfred’s hall, and no one except the king, his relatives, and his guards could carry a weapon in the royal presence. I surrendered Serpent-Breath and Wasp-Sting, then dipped my hands in a bowl of water offered by a servant. “Welcome to the king’s house, lord,” the servant said in formal greeting, then watched as I looped the rope about Skade’s neck.

She spat in my face and I grinned. “Time to meet the king, Skade,” I said, “spit at him and he’ll hang you.”

“I will curse you both,” she said.

Finan alone accompanied Steapa, Skade, and me into the monastery. The rest of my men took their horses through the western gate to water them in a stream while Steapa led us to the abbey church, a fine stone building with heavy oak roof beams. The high windows lit painted leather hides, and the one above the altar showed a white-robed girl being raised to her feet by a bearded and haloed man. The girl’s apple-plump face bore a look of pure astonishment, and I assumed she was the newly restored virgin, while the man’s expression suggested she might soon need the miracle repeated. Beneath her, seated on a rug-draped chair placed in front of the silver-piled altar, was Alfred.

A score of other men were in the church. They had been talking as we arrived, but the voices dropped to silence as I entered. On Alfred’s left was a gaggle of churchmen, among whom were my old friend Father Beocca and my old enemy Bishop Asser, a Welshman who had become the king’s most intimate adviser. In the nave of the church, seated on benches, were a half-dozen ealdormen, the leaders of those shires whose men had been summoned to join the army that faced Harald’s invasion. To Alfred’s right, seated on a slightly smaller chair, was his son-in-law, my cousin Æthelred, and behind him was his wife, Alfred’s daughter, Æthelflæd.

Æthelred was the Lord of Mercia. Mercia, of course, was the country to the north of Wessex, and its northern and eastern parts were ruled by the Danes. It had no king, instead it had my cousin, who was the acknowledged ruler of the Saxon parts of Mercia, though in truth he was in thrall to Alfred. Alfred, though he never made the claim explicit, was the actual ruler of Mercia, and Æthelred did his father-in-law’s bidding. Though how long that bidding could continue was dubious, for Alfred looked sicker than I had ever seen him. His pale, clerkly face was thinner than ever and his eyes had a bruised look of pain, though they had lost none of their intelligence.

He looked at me in silence, waited till I had bowed, then nodded a curt greeting. “You bring men, Lord Uhtred?”

“Three hundred, lord.”

“Is that all?” Alfred asked, flinching.

“Unless you wish to lose Lundene, lord, it’s all.”

“And you bring your woman?” Bishop Asser sneered.

Bishop Asser was an earsling, which is anything that drops out of an arse. He had dropped out of some Welsh arse, from where he had slimed his way into Alfred’s favor. Alfred thought the world of Asser who, in turn, hated me. I smiled at him. “I bring you Harald’s whore,” I said.

No one answered that. They all just stared at Skade, and none stared harder than the young man standing just behind Alfred’s throne. He had a thin face with prominent bones, pale skin, black hair that curled just above his embroidered collar, and eyes that were quick and bright. He seemed nervous, overawed perhaps by the presence of so many broad-shouldered warriors, while he himself was slender, almost fragile, in his build. I knew him well enough. His name was Edward, and he was the Ætheling, the king’s eldest son, and he was being groomed to take his father’s throne. Now he was gaping at Skade as though he had never seen a woman before, but when she met his gaze he blushed and pretended to take a keen interest in the rush-covered floor.

“You brought what?” Bishop Asser broke the surprised silence.

“Her name is Skade,” I said, thrusting her forward. Edward raised his eyes and stared at Skade like a puppy seeing fresh meat.

“Bow to the king,” I ordered Skade in Danish.

“I do what I wish,” she said and, just as I supposed she would, she spat toward Alfred.

“Strike her!” Bishop Asser yapped.

“Do churchmen strike women?” I asked him.

“Be quiet, Lord Uhtred,” Alfred said tiredly. I saw how his right hand was curled into a claw that clutched the arm of the chair. He gazed at Skade, who returned the stare defiantly. “A remarkable woman,” the king said mildly, “does she speak English?”

“She pretends not to,” I said, “but she understands it well enough.”

Skade rewarded that truth with a sidelong look of pure spite. “I’ve cursed you,” she said under her breath.

“The easiest way to be rid of a curse,” I spoke just as softly, “is to cut out the tongue that made it. Now be silent, you rancid bitch.”

“The curse of death,” she said, just above a whisper.

“What is she saying?” Alfred asked.

“She is reputed to be a sorceress, lord,” I said, “and claims to have cursed me.”

Alfred and most of the churchmen touched the crosses hanging about their necks. It is a strange thing I have noticed about Christians, that they claim our gods have no power yet they fear the curses made in the names of those gods. “How did you capture her?” Alfred asked.

I gave a brief account of what had happened at Edwulf’s hall and when I was done Alfred looked at her coldly. “Did she kill Edwulf’s priest?” he asked.

“Did you kill Edwulf’s priest, bitch?” I asked her in Danish.

She smiled at me. “Of course I did,” she said, “I kill all priests.”

“She killed the priest, lord,” I told Alfred.

He shuddered. “Take her outside,” he ordered Steapa, “and guard her well.” He held up a hand. “She is not to be molested!” He waited till Skade was gone before looking at me. “You’re welcome, Lord Uhtred,” he said, “you and your men. But I had hoped you would bring more.”

“I brought enough, lord King,” I said.

“Enough for what?” Bishop Asser asked.

I looked at the runt. He was a bishop, but still wore his monkish robes cinched tight around his scrawny waist. He had a face like a starved stoat, with pale green eyes and thin lips. He spent half his time in the wastelands of his native Wales, and half whispering pious poison into Alfred’s ears, and together the two men had made a law code for Wessex, and it was my amusement and ambition to break every one of those laws before either the king or the Welsh runt died. “Enough,” I said, “to tear Harald and his men into bloody ruin.”

Æthelflæd smiled at that. She alone of Alfred’s family was my friend. I had not seen her in four years and she looked much thinner now. She was only a year or two above twenty, but appeared older and sadder, yet her hair was still lustrous gold and her eyes as blue as the summer sky. I winked at her, as much as anything to annoy her husband, my cousin, who immediately rose to the bait and snorted. “If Harald were that easy to destroy,” Æthelred said, “we would have done it already.”

“How?” I asked, “by watching him from the hills?” Æthelred grimaced. Normally he would have argued with me, because he was a belligerent and proud man, but he looked pale. He had an illness, no one knew what, and it left him tired and weak for long stretches. He was perhaps forty in that year, and his red hair had strands of white at his temples. This, I guessed, was one of his bad days. “Harald should have been killed weeks ago,” I taunted him scornfully.

“Enough!” Alfred slapped the arm of his chair, startling a leather-hooded falcon that was perched on a lectern beside the altar. The bird flapped his wings, but the jesses held him firm. Alfred grimaced. His face told me what I well knew, that he needed me and did not want to need me. “We could not attack Harald,” he explained patiently, “so long as Haesten threatened our northern flank.”

“Haesten couldn’t threaten a wet puppy,” I said, “he’s too frightened of defeat.”

I was arrogant that day, arrogant and confident, because there are times when men need to see arrogance. These men had spent days arguing about what to do, and in the end they had done nothing, and all that time they had been multiplying Harald’s forces in their minds until they were convinced he was invincible. Alfred, meanwhile, had deliberately refrained from seeking my help be cause he wanted to hand the reins of Wessex and Mercia to his son and to his son-in-law, which meant giving them reputations as leaders, but their leadership had failed, and so Alfred had sent for me. And now, because they needed it, I countered their fears with an arrogant assurance.

“Harald has five thousand men,” Ealdorman Æthelhelm of Wiltunscir said softly. Æthelhelm was a good man, but he too seemed infected by the timidity that had overtaken Alfred’s entourage. “He brought two hundred ships!” he added.

“If he has two thousand men, I’d be astonished,” I said. “How many horses does he have?” No one knew, or at least no one answered. Harald might well have brought as many as five thousand men, but his army consisted only of those who had horses.

“However many men he has,” Alfred said pointedly, “he must attack this burh to advance further into Wessex.”

That was nonsense, of course. Harald could go north or south of Æscengum, but there was no future in arguing that with Alfred, who had a peculiar affection for the burh. “So you plan to defeat him here, lord?” I asked instead.

“I have nine hundred men here,” he said, “and we have the burh’s garrison, and now your three hundred. Harald will break himself on these walls.” I saw Æthelred, Æthelhelm, and Ealdorman Æthelnoth of Sumorsæte all nod their agreement.

“And I have five hundred men at Silcestre,” Æthelred said, as though that made all the difference.

“And what are they doing there?” I asked, “pissing in the Temes while we fight?”

Æthelflæd grinned, while her brother Edward looked affronted. Dear Father Beocca, who had been my childhood tutor, gave me a long-suffering look of reproof. Alfred just sighed. “Lord Æthelred’s men can harry the enemy while they besiege us,” he explained.

“So our victory, lord,” I said, “depends on Harald attacking us here? On Harald allowing us to kill his men while they try to cross the wall?” Alfred did not answer. A pair of sparrows squabbled among the rafters. A thick beeswax candle on the altar behind Alfred guttered and smoked and a monk hurried to trim the wick. The flame grew again, its light reflected from a high golden reliquary that seemed to contain a withered hand.

“Harald will want to defeat us.” Edward made his first tentative contribution to the discussion.

“Why?” I asked, “when we’re doing our best to defeat ourselves?” There was an aggrieved murmur from the courtiers, but I overrode it. “Let me tell you what Harald will do, lord,” I said, speaking to Alfred. “He’ll take his army north of us and advance on Wintanceaster. There’s a lot of silver there, all conveniently piled in your new cathedral, and you’ve brought your army here so he won’t have much trouble breaking through Wintanceaster’s walls. And even if he does besiege us here,” I spoke even louder to drown Bishop Asser’s angry protest, “all he needs do is surround us and let us starve. How much food do we have here?”

The king gestured to Asser, requesting that he stop spluttering. “So what would you do, Lord Uhtred?” Alfred asked, and there was a plaintive note in his voice. He was old and he was tired and he was ill, and Harald’s invasion seemed to threaten all that he had achieved.

“I would suggest, lord,” I said, “that Lord Æthelred order his five hundred men to cross the Temes and march to Fearnhamme.”

A hound whined in a corner of the church, but otherwise there was no sound. They all stared at me, but I saw some faces brighten. They had been wallowing with indecision and had needed the sword stroke of certainty.

Alfred broke the silence. “Fearnhamme?” he asked cautiously.

“Fearnhamme,” I repeated, watching Æthelred, but his pale face displayed no reaction, and no one else in the church made any comment.

I had been thinking about the country to the north of Æscengum. War is not just about men, nor even about supplies, it is also about the hills and valleys, the rivers and marshes, the places where land and water will help defeat an enemy. I had traveled through Fearnhamme often enough on my journeys from Lundene to Wintanceaster, and wherever I traveled I noted how the land lay and how it might be used if an enemy was near. “There’s a hill just north of the river at Fearnhamme,” I said.

“There is! I know it well,” one of the monks standing to Alfred’s right said, “it has an earthwork.”

I looked at him, seeing a red-faced, hook-nosed man. “And who are you?” I asked coldly.

“Oslac, lord,” he said, “the abbot here.”

“The earthwork,” I asked him, “is it in good repair?”

“It was dug by the ancient folk,” Abbot Oslac said, “and it’s much overgrown with grass, but the ditch is deep and the bank is still firm.”

There were many such earthworks in Britain, mute witnesses to the warfare that had rolled across the land before we Saxons came to bring still more. “The bank’s high enough to make defense easy?” I asked the abbot.

“You could hold it forever, given enough men,” Oslac said confidently. I gazed at him, noting the scar across the bridge of his nose. Abbot Oslac, I decided, had been a warrior before he became a monk.

“But why invite Harald to besiege us there?” Alfred asked, “when we have Æscengum and its walls and its storehouses?”

“And how long will those storehouses last, lord?” I asked him. “We have enough men inside these walls to hold the enemy till Judgment Day, but not enough food to reach Christmas.” The burhs were not provisioned for a large army. The intent of the walled towns was to hold the enemy in check and allow the army of household warriors, the trained men, to attack the besiegers in the open country outside.

“But Fearnhamme?” Alfred asked.

“Is where we shall destroy Harald,” I said unhelpfully. I looked at Æthelred. “Order your men to Fearnhamme, cousin, and we’ll trap Harald there.”

There was a time when Alfred would have questioned and tested my ideas, but that day he looked too tired and too sick to argue, and he plainly did not have the patience to listen to other men challenging my plans. Besides, he had learned to trust me when it came to warfare, and I expected his assent to my vague proposal, but then he surprised me. He turned to the churchmen and gestured that one of them should join him, and Bishop Asser took the elbow of a young, stocky monk and guided him to the king’s chair. The monk had a hard, bony face and black tonsured hair as bristly and stiff as a badger’s pelt. He might have been handsome except his eyes were milky, and I guessed he had been blind from birth. He groped for the king’s chair, found it and knelt beside Alfred, who laid a fatherly hand on the monk’s bowed head. “So, Brother Godwin?” he asked gently.

“I am here, lord, I am here,” Godwin said in a voice scarce above a hoarse whisper.

“And you heard the Lord Uhtred?”

“I heard, lord, I heard.” Brother Godwin raised his blind eyes to the king. He said nothing for a while, but his face was twisting all that time, twisting and grimacing like a man possessed by an evil spirit. He started to utter a choking noise, and what astonished me was that none of this alarmed Alfred, who waited patiently until, at last, the young monk regained a normal expression. “It will be well, lord King,” Godwin said, “it will be well.”

Alfred patted Brother Godwin’s head again and smiled at me. “We shall do as you suggest, Lord Uhtred,” he said decisively. “You will direct your men to Fearnhamme,” he spoke to Æthelred, then looked back to me, “and my son,” he went on, “will command the West Saxon forces.”

“Yes, lord,” I said dutifully. Edward, the youngest man in the church, looked embarrassed, and his eyes flicked nervously from me to his father.

“And you,” Alfred turned to look at his son, “will obey the Lord Uhtred.”

Æthelred could contain himself no longer. “What guarantees do we have,” he asked petulantly, “that the heathens will go to Fearnhamme?”

“Mine,” I said harshly.

“But you cannot be certain!” Æthelred protested.

“He will go to Fearnhamme,” I said, “and he will die there.”

I was wrong about that.

Messengers rode to Æthelred’s men at Silcestre, ordering them to march on Fearnhamme at first light next morning. Once there they were to occupy the hill that stands just north of the river. Those five hundred men were the anvil, while the men at Æscengum were my hammer, but to lure Harald onto the anvil would mean dividing our forces, and it is a rule of war not to do that. We had, at my best estimate, about five hundred men fewer than the Danes, and by keeping our army in two parts I was inviting Harald to destroy them separately. “But I’m relying on Harald being an impulsive fool, lord,” I told Alfred that night.

The king had joined me on Æscengum’s eastern rampart. He had arrived with his usual entourage of priests, but had waved them away so he could talk with me privately. He stood for a moment just staring at the distant dull glow of fires where Harald’s men had sacked villages and I knew he was lamenting all the burned churches. “Is he an impulsive fool?” he inquired mildly.

“You tell me, lord,” I said.

“He’s savage, unpredictable, and given to sudden rages,” the king said. Alfred paid well for information about the northmen and kept meticulous notes on every leader. Harald had been pillaging in Frankia before its people bribed him to leave, and I did not doubt that Alfred’s spies had told him everything they could discover about Harald Bloodhair. “You know why he’s called Bloodhair?” Alfred asked.

“Because before every battle, lord, he sacrifices a horse to Thor and soaks his hair in the animal’s blood.”

“Yes,” Alfred said. He leaned on the palisade. “How can you be sure he’ll go to Fearnhamme?” he asked.

“Because I’ll draw him there, lord. I’ll make a snare and pull him onto our spears.”

“The woman?” Alfred asked with a slight shudder.

“She is said to be special to him, lord.”

“So I hear,” he said. “But he will have other whores.”

“She’s not the only reason he’ll go to Fearnhamme, lord,” I said, “but she’s reason enough.”

“Women brought sin into this world,” he said so quietly I almost did not hear him. He rested against the oak trunks of the parapet and gazed toward the small town of Godelmingum that lay just a few miles eastward. The people who lived there had been ordered to flee, and now the only inhabitants were fifty of my men who stood sentinel to warn us of the Danish approach. “I had hoped the Danes had ceased wanting this kingdom,” he broke the silence plaintively.

“They’ll always want Wessex,” I said.

“All I ask of God,” he went on, ignoring my truism, “is that Wessex should be safe and ruled by my son.” I answered nothing to that. There was no law that decreed a son should succeed his father as king, and if there had been then Alfred would not be Wessex’s ruler. He had succeeded his brother, and that brother had a son, Æthelwold, who wanted desperately to be king in Wessex. Æthelwold had been too young to assume the throne when his father died, but he was in his thirties now, a man in his ale-sozzled prime. Alfred sighed, then straightened. “Edward will need you as an adviser,” he said.

“I should be honored, lord,” I said.

Alfred heard the dutiful tone in my voice and did not like it. He stiffened, and I expected one of his customary reproofs, but instead he looked pained. “God has blessed me,” he said quietly. “When I came to the throne, Lord Uhtred, it seemed impossible that we should resist the Danes. Yet by God’s grace Wessex lives. We have churches, monasteries, schools, laws. We have made a country where God dwells, and I cannot believe it is God’s will that it should vanish when I am called to judgment.”

“May that be many years yet, lord,” I said as dutifully as I had spoken before.

“Oh, don’t be a fool,” he snarled with sudden anger. He shuddered, closed his eyes momentarily, and when he spoke again his voice was low and wan. “I can feel death coming, Lord Uhtred. It’s like an ambush. I know it’s there and I can do nothing to avoid it. It will take me and it will destroy me, but I do not want it to destroy Wessex with me.”

“If it’s your God’s will,” I said harshly, “then nothing I can do nor anything Edward can do will stop it.”

“We’re not puppets in God’s hands,” he said testily. “We are his instruments. We earn our fate.” He looked at me with some bitterness for he had never forgiven me for abandoning Christianity in favor of the older religion. “Don’t your gods reward you for good behavior?”

“My gods are capricious, lord.” I had learned that word from Bishop Erkenwald who had intended it as an insult, but once I had learned its meaning I liked it. My gods are capricious.

“How can you serve a capricious god?” Alfred asked.

“I don’t.”

“But you said…”

“They are capricious,” I interrupted him, “but that’s their pleasure. My task is not to serve them, but to amuse them, and if I do then they will reward me in the life to come.”

“Amuse them?” He sounded shocked.

“Why not?” I demanded. “We have cats, dogs, and falcons for our pleasure, the gods made us for the same reason. Why did your god make you?”

“To be His servant,” he said firmly. “If I’m God’s cat then I must catch the devil’s mice. That is duty, Lord Uhtred, duty.”

“While my duty,” I said, “is to catch Harald and slice his head off. That, I think, will amuse my gods.”

“Your gods are cruel,” he said, then shuddered.

“Men are cruel,” I said, “and the gods made us like themselves, and some of the gods are kind, some are cruel. So are we. If it amuses the gods then Harald will slice my head off.” I touched the hammer amulet.

Alfred grimaced. “God made you his instrument, and I do not know why he chose you, a pagan, but so he did and you have served me well.”

He had spoken fervently, surprising me, and I bowed my head in acknowledgment. “Thank you, lord.”

“And now I wish you to serve my son,” he added.

I should have known that was coming, but somehow the request took me by surprise. I was silent a moment as I tried to think what to say. “I agreed to serve you, lord,” I said finally, “and so I have, but I have my own battles to fight.”

“Bebbanburg,” he said sourly.

“Is mine,” I said firmly, “and before I die I wish to see my banner flying over its gate and my son strong enough to defend it.”

He gazed at the glow of the enemy fires. I was noticing how scattered those fires were, which told me Harald had not yet concentrated his army. It would take time to pull those men together from across the ravaged countryside, which meant, I thought, that the battle would not be fought tomorrow, but the next day. “Bebbanburg,” Alfred said, “is an island of the English in a sea of Danes.”

“True, lord,” I said, noting how he used the word “English.” It embraced all the tribes who had come across the sea, whether they were Saxon, Angle, or Jute, and it spoke of Alfred’s ambition, that he now made explicit.

“The best way to keep Bebbanburg safe,” he said, “is to surround it with more English land.”

“Drive the Danes from Northumbria?” I asked.

“If it is God’s will,” he said, “then I will wish my son to do that great deed.” He turned to me, and for a moment he was not a king, but a father. “Help him, Lord Uhtred,” he said pleadingly. “You are my dux bellorum, my lord of battles, and men know they will win when you lead them. Scour the enemy from England, and so take your fortress back and make my son safe on his God-given throne.”

He had not flattered me, he had spoken the truth. I was the warlord of Wessex and I was proud of that reputation. I went into battle glittering with gold, silver, and pride, and I should have known that the gods would resent that.

“I want you,” Alfred spoke softly but firmly, “to give my son your oath.”

I cursed inwardly, but spoke respectfully. “What oath, lord?”

“I wish you to serve Edward as you have served me.”

And thus Alfred would tie me to Wessex, to Christian Wessex that lay so far from my northern home. I had spent my first ten years in Bebbanburg, that great rock-fastness on the northern sea, and when I had first ridden to war the fortress had been left in the care of my uncle, who had stolen it from me.

“I will swear an oath to you, lord,” I said, “and to no one else.”

“I already have your oath,” he said harshly.

“And I will keep it,” I said.

“And when I’m dead,” he asked bitterly, “what then?”

“Then, lord, I shall go to Bebbanburg and take it, and keep it, and spend my days beside the sea.”

“And if my son is threatened?”

“Then Wessex must defend him,” I said, “as I defend you now.”

“And what makes you think you can defend me?” He was angry now. “You would take my army to Fearnhamme? You have no certainty that Harald will go there!”

“He will,” I said.

“You can’t know that!”

“I shall force it on him,” I said.

“How?” he demanded.

“The gods will do that for me,” I said.

“You’re a fool,” he snapped.

“If you don’t trust me,” I spoke just as forcibly, “then your son-in-law wants to be your lord of battles. Or you can command the army yourself? Or give Edward his chance?”

He shuddered, I thought with anger, but when he spoke again his voice was patient. “I just wish to know,” he said, “why you are so sure that the enemy will do what you want.”

“Because the gods are capricious,” I said arrogantly, “and I am about to amuse them.”

“Tell me,” he said tiredly.

“Harald is a fool,” I said, “and he is a fool in love. We have his woman. I shall take her to Fearnhamme, and he will follow because he is besotted with her. And even if I did not have his woman,” I went on, “he would still follow me.”

I had thought he would scoff at that, but he considered my words quietly, then joined his hands prayerfully. “I am tempted to doubt you, but Brother Godwin assures me you will bring us victory.”

“Brother Godwin?” I had wanted to ask about the strange blind monk.

“God speaks to him,” Alfred said with a quiet assurance.

I almost laughed, but then thought that the gods do speak to us, though usually by signs and portents. “Does he take all your decisions, lord?” I asked sourly.

“God assists me in all things,” Alfred said sharply, then turned away because the bell was summoning the Christians to prayer in Æscengum’s new church.

The gods are capricious, and I was about to amuse them. And Alfred was right. I was a fool.

What did Harald want? Or, for that matter, Haesten? It was simpler to answer for Haesten, because he was the cleverer and more ambitious man, and he wanted land. He wanted to be a king.

The northmen had come to Britain in search of kingdoms, and the lucky ones had found their thrones. A northman reigned in Northumbria, and another in East Anglia, and Haesten wanted to be their equal. He wanted the crown, the treasures, the women, and the status, and there were two places those things could be found. One was Mercia and the other Wessex.

Mercia was the better prospect. It had no king and was riven by warfare. The north and east of the country was ruled by jarls, powerful Danes who kept strong troops of household warriors and barred their gates each night, while the south and east was Saxon land. The Saxons looked to my cousin, Æthelred, for protection and he gave it to them, but only because he had inherited great wealth and enjoyed the firm support of his father-in-law, Alfred. Mercia was not part of Wessex, but it did Wessex’s bidding, and Alfred was the true power behind Æthelred. Haesten might attack Mercia and he would find allies in the north and east, but eventu ally he would find himself facing the armies of Saxon Mercia and Alfred’s Wessex. And Haesten was cautious. He had made his camp on a desolate shore of Wessex, but he did nothing provocative. He waited, certain that Alfred would pay him to leave, which Alfred had done. He also waited to see what damage Harald might achieve.

Harald probably wanted a throne, but above all he wanted everything that glittered. He wanted silver, gold, and women. He was like a child that sees something pretty and screams until he possesses it. The throne of Wessex might fall into his hands as he greedily scooped up his baubles, but he did not aim for it. He had come to Wessex because it was full of treasures, and now he was ravaging the land, taking plunder, while Haesten just watched. Haesten hoped, I think, that Harald’s wild troops would so weaken Alfred that he could come behind and take the whole land. If Wessex was a bull, then Harald’s men were blood-maddened terriers who would attack in a pack and most would die in the attacking, but they would weaken the bull, and then Haesten, the mastiff, would come and finish the job. So to deter Haesten I needed to crush Harald’s stronger forces. The bull could not be weakened, but the terriers had to be killed, and they were dangerous, they were vicious, but they were also ill-disciplined, and I would now tempt them with treasure. I would tempt them with Skade’s sleek beauty.

The fifty men I had posted in Godelmingum fled from that town next morning, retreating from a larger group of Danes. My men splashed their horses through the river and streamed into Æscengum as the Danes lined the farther bank to stare at the banners hanging bright on the burh’s eastern palisade. Those banners showed crosses and saints, the panoply of Alfred’s state, and to make certain the enemy knew the king was in the burh I made Osferth walk slowly along the wall dressed in a bright cloak and with a circlet of shining bronze on his head.

Osferth, my man, was Alfred’s bastard. Few people knew, even though Osferth’s resemblance to his father was striking. He had been born to a servant girl whom Alfred had taken to his bed in the days before Christianity had captured his soul. Once, in an unguarded moment, Alfred had confided to me that Osferth was a continual reproof. “A reminder,” he had told me, “of the sinner I once was.”

“A sweet sin, lord,” I had replied lightly.

“Most sins are sweet,” the king said, “the devil makes them so.”

What kind of perverted religion makes pleasures into sins? The old gods, even though they never deny us pleasure, fade these days. Folk abandon them, preferring the whip and bridle of the Christians’ nailed god.

So Osferth, a reminder of Alfred’s sweet sin, played the king that morning. I doubt he enjoyed it, for he resented Alfred, who had tried to turn him into a priest. Osferth had rebelled against that destiny, becoming one of my house-warriors instead. He was not a natural fighter, not like Finan, but he brought a keen intelligence to the business of war, and intelligence is a weapon that has a sharp edge and a long reach.

All war ends with the shield wall, where men hack in drink-sodden rage with axes and swords, but the art is to manipulate the enemy so that when that moment of screaming rage arrives it comes to your advantage. By parading Osferth on Æscengum’s wall I was trying to tempt Harald. Where the king is, I was suggesting to our enemies, there is treasure. Come to Æscengum, I was saying, and to increase the temptation I displayed Skade to the Danish warriors who gathered on the river’s far bank.

A few arrows had been shot at us, but those ended when the enemy recognized Skade. She unwittingly helped me by screaming at the men across the water. “Come and kill them all!” she shouted.

“I’ll shut her mouth,” Steapa volunteered.

“Let the bitch shout,” I said.

She pretended to speak no English, yet she gave me a withering glance before looking back across the river. “They’re cowards,” she shouted at the Danes, “Saxon cowards! Tell Harald they will die like sheep.” She stepped close to the palisade. She could not cross the wall because I had ordered her tied by a rope that was looped about her neck and held by one of Steapa’s men.

“Tell Harald his whore is here!” I called over the river, “and that she’s noisy! Maybe we’ll cut out her tongue and send it to Harald for his supper!”

“Goat turd,” she spat at me, then reached over the palisade’s top and plucked out an arrow that had lodged in one of the oak trunks. Steapa immediately moved to disarm her, but I waved him back. Skade ignored us. She was gazing fixedly at the arrowhead which, with a sudden wrench, she freed from the feathered shaft, which she tossed over the wall. She gave me a glance, raised the arrowhead to her lips, closed her eyes, and kissed the steel. She muttered some words I could not hear, touched her lips to the steel again, then pushed it beneath her gown, hesitated, then jabbed the point into one of her breasts. She gave me a triumphant look as she brought the bloodstained steel into view, then she flung the arrowhead into the river and lifted her hands and face to the late summer sky. She screamed to get the attention of the gods, and when the scream faded she turned back to me. “You’re cursed, Uhtred,” she said with a tone she might have used to remark on unremarkable weather.

I resisted the impulse to touch the hammer hanging about my neck because to have done so would have shown that I feared her curse, which instead I pretended to dismiss with a sneer. “Waste your breath, whore,” I said, yet I still moved my hand to my sword and rubbed a finger across the silver cross embedded in Serpent-Breath’s hilt. The cross meant nothing to me, except it had been a gift from Hild, once my lover and now an abbess of extraordinary piety. Did I think that touching the cross was a substitute for the hammer? The gods would not think so.

“When I was a child,” Skade said suddenly, and still using a conversational tone as though she and I were old friends, “my father beat my mother senseless.”

“Because she was like you?” I asked.

She ignored that. “He broke her ribs, an arm, and her nose,” she went on, “and later that day he took me to the high pastures to help bring back the herd. I was twelve years old. I remember there were snowflakes flying and I was frightened of him. I wanted to ask why he had hurt my mother, but I didn’t like to speak in case he beat me, but then he told me anyway. He said he wanted to marry me to his closest friend, and my mother had opposed the idea. I hated it too, but he said I would marry the man anyway.”

“Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?” I asked.

“So I pushed him over a bluff,” she said, “and I remember him falling through the snowflakes and I watched him bounce on the rocks and I heard him scream. His back was broken.” She smiled. “I left him there. He was still alive when I brought the herd down. I scrambled down the rocks and pissed on his face before he died.” She looked calmly at me. “That was my first curse, Lord Uhtred, but not my last. I will lift the curse on you if you let me go.”

“You think you can frighten me into giving you back to Harald?” I asked, amused.

“You will,” she said confidently, “you will.”

“Take her away,” I ordered, tired of her.

Harald came at midday. One of Steapa’s men brought me the news and I climbed again to the ramparts to discover that Harald Bloodhair was on the river’s farther bank with fifty companions, all in mail. His banner showed an ax blade and its pole was surmounted by a wolf-skull that had been painted red.

He was a big man. His horse was big too, but even so Harald Bloodhair seemed to dwarf the stallion. He was too distant for me to see him clearly, but his yellow hair, long, thick, and unstained with any blood, was plainly visible, as was his broad beard. For a time he just stared at Æscengum’s wall, then he unbuckled his sword belt, threw the weapon to one of his men, and spurred his horse into the river. It was a warm day, but his mail was still covered by a great cloak of black bear fur that made him appear monstrously huge. He wore gold on his wrists and about his neck, and more gold decorated his horse’s bridle. He urged the stallion to the river’s center where the water surged over his boot tops. Any of the archers on Æscengum’s wall could have shot an arrow, but he had ostenta tiously disarmed himself, which meant he wanted to talk, and I gave orders that no one was to loose a bow at him. He took off his helmet and searched the men crowding the rampart until he saw Osferth in his circlet. Harald had never seen Alfred and mistook the bastard for the father. “Alfred!” he shouted.

“The king doesn’t talk with brigands,” I called back.

Harald grinned. His face was broad as a barley-shovel, his nose hooked and crooked, his mouth wide, his eyes as feral as any wolf’s. “Are you Uhtred Turdson?” he greeted me.

“I know you’re Harald the Gutless,” I responded with a dutiful insult.

He gazed at me. Now that he was closer I could see that his yellow hair and beard were dirt-flecked, ropy and greasy, like the hair from a corpse buried in dung. The river surged by his stallion. “Tell your king,” Harald called to me, “that he can save himself much trouble by giving me his throne.”

“He invites you to come and take it,” I said.

“But first,” he leaned forward and patted his horse’s neck, “you will return my property.”

“We have nothing of yours,” I said.

“Skade,” he said flatly.

“She’s yours?” I asked, pretending surprise. “But surely a whore belongs to whoever can pay her?”

He gave me a look of instant hatred. “If you have touched her,” he said, pointing a leather-gloved finger at me, “or if any of your men have touched her, then I swear on Thor’s prick I’ll make your deaths so slow that your screams will stir the dead in their caves of ice.” He was a fool, I thought. A clever man would have pretended the woman meant little or nothing to him, but Harald was already revealing his price. “Show her to me!” he demanded.

I hesitated, as if making up my mind, but I wanted Harald to see the bait and so I ordered two of Steapa’s men to fetch Skade. She arrived with the rope still around her neck, yet such was her beauty and her calm dignity that she dominated the rampart. I thought, at that moment, that she was the most queenlike of any woman I had ever seen. She moved to the palisade and smiled at Harald, who kicked his horse a few paces forward. “Have they touched you?” he shouted up to her.

She gave me a mocking look before answering. “They’re not men enough, my lord,” she called.

“Promise me!” he shouted, and the desperation was plain in his voice.

“I promise you,” she answered, and her voice was a caress.

Harald wheeled his horse so it was sideways to me, then raised his gloved hand to point at me. “You showed her naked, Uhtred Turdson.”

“Would you like me to show her that way again?”

“For that you will lose your eyes,” he said, prompting Skade to laugh. “Let her go now,” Harald went on, “and I won’t kill you! Instead I’ll keep you blind and naked, on a rope’s end, and display you to all the world.”

“You yelp like a puppy,” I called.

“Take the rope from her neck,” Harald ordered me, “and send her to me now!”

“Come and take her, puppy!” I shouted back. I was feeling elated. Harald, I thought, was proving to be a headstrong fool. He wanted Skade more than he wanted Wessex, indeed more than he wanted all the treasures of Alfred’s kingdom. I remember thinking that I had him exactly where I wished him to be, on the end of my lead, but then he turned his horse and gestured toward the growing crowd of warriors on the river bank.

And from the trees that grew thick on that far bank emerged a line of women and children. They were our people, Saxons, and they were roped together because they had been taken for slavery. Harald’s men, as they ravaged through eastern Wessex, had doubtless captured every child and young woman they could find, and, when they had finished amusing themselves, would ship them to the slave markets of Frankia. But these women and infants were brought to the river’s edge where, on an order from Harald, they were made to kneel. The youngest child was about the age of my own Stiorra, and I can still see that child’s eyes as she stared up at me. She saw a warlord in shining glory and I saw nothing but pitiable despair.

“Start,” Harald called to his men.

One of his warriors, a grinning brute who looked as if he could out-wrestle an ox, stepped behind the woman at the southern end of the line. He was carrying a battle-ax that he swung high, then brought down so that the blade split her skull and buried itself in her trunk. I heard the crunch of the blade in bone over the noise of the river, and saw blood jetting higher than Harald on his horse. “One,” Harald called, and gestured to the blood-spattered axman who stepped briskly to his left to stand behind a child who was screaming because she had just seen her mother murdered. The red-bladed ax rose.

“Wait,” I called.

Harald held up his hand to check the ax, then gave me a mocking smile. “You said something, Lord Uhtred?” he asked. I did not answer. I was watching a swirl of blood vanish and fade downstream. A man severed the rope tying the dead woman to her child, then kicked the corpse into the river. “Speak, Lord Uhtred, please do speak,” Harald said with exaggerated courtesy.

There were thirty-three women and children left. If I did nothing then all would die. “Cut her free,” I said softly.

The rope round Skade’s neck was cut. “Go,” I told her.

I hoped she would break her legs as she jumped from the palisade, but she landed lithely, climbed the ditch’s far slope, then walked to the river’s edge. Harald spurred his horse to her, held out a hand, and she swung up behind his saddle. She looked at me, touched a finger to her mouth, and held the hand toward me. “You’re cursed, Lord Uhtred,” she said, smiling, then Harald kicked his horse back to the far bank where the women and children had been led back into the thick-leaved trees.

So Harald had what he wanted.

But Skade wanted to be queen, and Harald wanted me blind.

“What now?” Steapa asked in his deep growling voice.

“We kill the bastard,” I said. And, like a faint shadow on a dull day, I sensed her curse.

That night I watched the glow of Harald’s fires; not the nearer ones in Godelmingum, though they were thick enough, but the fainter glimmer of more distant blazes, and I noted that much of the sky was now dark. For the last few nights the fires had been scattered across eastern Wessex, but now they drew closer and that meant Harald’s men were concentrating. He doubtless hoped that Alfred would stay in Æscengum and so he was gathering his army, not to besiege us, but probably to launch a sudden and fast attack on Alfred’s capital, Wintanceaster.

A few Danes had crossed the river to ride round Æscengum’s walls, but most were still on the far bank. They were doing what I wanted, yet my heart felt dour that night and I had to pretend confidence. “Tomorrow, lord,” I told Edward, Alfred’s son, “the enemy will cross the river. They will be pursuing me, and you will let them all get past the burh, wait one hour and then follow.”

“I understand,” he said nervously.

“Follow them,” I said, “but don’t get into a fight till you reach Fearnhamme.”

Steapa, standing beside Edward, frowned. “Suppose they turn on us?”

“They won’t,” I said. “Just wait till his army has gone past, then follow it all the way to Fearnhamme.”

That sounded an easy enough instruction, but I doubted it would be so easy. Most of the enemy would cross the river in a great rush, eager to pursue me, but the stragglers would follow all day. Edward had to judge when the largest part of Harald’s army was an hour ahead and then, ignoring those stragglers, pursue Harald to Fearnhamme. It would be a difficult decision, but he had Steapa to advise him. Steapa might not have been clever, but he had a killer’s instinct that I trusted.

“At Fearnhamme,” Edward began, then hesitated. The half- moon, showing between clouds, lit his pale and anxious face. He looked like his father, but there was an uncertainty in him which was not surprising. He was only about seventeen years old, yet he was being given a grown man’s responsibility. He would have Steapa with him, but if he was to be a king then he would have to learn the hard business of making choices.

“Fearnhamme will be simple,” I said dismissively. “I shall be north of the river with the Mercians. We’ll be on a hill protected by earthworks. Harald’s men will cross the ford to attack us, and you will attack their rear. When you do that we attack their vanguard.”

“Simple?” Steapa echoed with a trace of amusement.

“We crush them between us,” I said.

“With God’s help,” Edward said firmly.

“Even without that,” I snarled.

Edward questioned me for the better part of an hour, right until the bell summoned him to prayers. He was like his father. He wanted to understand everything and have everything arranged in neat lists, but this was war and war was never neat. I believed Harald would follow me, and I trusted Steapa to bring the greater part of Alfred’s army behind Harald, but I could give Edward no promises. He wanted certainty, but I was planning battle, and I was relieved when he went to pray with his father.

Steapa left me and I stood alone on the rampart. Sentries gave me room, somehow aware of my baleful mood, and when I heard footsteps I ignored them, hoping that whoever it was would go away and leave me in peace.

“The Lord Uhtred,” a gently mocking voice said when the steps paused behind me.

“The Lady Æthelflæd,” I said, not turning to look at her.

She came and stood beside me, her cloak touching mine. “How is Gisela?”

I touched Thor’s hammer at my neck. “About to give birth again.”

“The fourth child?”

“Yes,” I said, and shot a prayer toward the house of the gods that Gisela would survive the birth. “How is Ælfwynn?” I asked. Ælfwynn was Æthelflæd’s daughter, still an infant.

“She thrives.”

“An only child?”

“And going to stay that way,” Æthelflæd said bitterly and I looked at her profile, so delicate in the moonlight. I had known her since she was a small child when she had been the happiest, most carefree of Alfred’s children, but now her face was guarded, as though she shrank from bad dreams. “My father’s angry with you,” she said.

“When is he not?”

She gave a hint of a smile, quickly gone. “He wants you to give an oath to Edward.”

“I know.”

“Then why won’t you?”

“Because I’m not a slave to be handed on to a new master.”

“Oh!” she sounded sarcastic, “you’re not a woman?”

“I’m taking my family north,” I said.

“If my father dies,” Æthelflæd said, then hesitated. “When my father dies, what happens to Wessex?”

“Edward rules.”

“He needs you,” she said. I shrugged. “As long as you live, Lord Uhtred,” she went on, “the Danes hesitate to attack.”

“Harald didn’t hesitate.”

“Because he’s a fool,” she said scornfully, “and tomorrow you’ll kill him.”

“Perhaps,” I said cautiously.

A murmur of voices made Æthelflæd turn to see men spilling from the church. “My husband,” she said, investing those two words with loathing, “sent a message to Lord Aldhelm.”

“Aldhelm leads the Mercian troops?”

Æthelflæd nodded. I knew Aldhelm. He was my cousin’s favorite and a man of unbounded ambition, sly and clever. “I hope your husband ordered Aldhelm to Fearnhamme,” I said.

“He did,” Æthelflæd said, then lowered and quickened her voice, “but he also sent word that Aldhelm was to withdraw north if he thought the enemy too strong.”

I had half suspected that would happen. “So Aldhelm is to preserve Mercia’s army?”

“How else can my husband take Wessex when my father dies?” Æthelflæd asked in a voice of silken innocence. I glanced down at her, but she just gazed at the fires of Godelmingum.

“Will Aldhelm fight?” I asked her.

“Not if it means weakening Mercia’s army,” she said.

“Then tomorrow I shall have to persuade Aldhelm to his duty.”

“But you have no authority over him,” Æthelflæd said.

I patted Serpent-Breath’s hilt. “I have this.”

“And he has five hundred men,” Æthelflæd said. “But there is one person he will obey.”

“You?”

“So tomorrow I ride with you,” she said.

“Your husband will forbid it,” I answered.

“Of course he will,” she said calmly, “but my husband won’t know. And you will do me a service, Lord Uhtred.”

“I am ever at your service, my lady,” I said, too lightly.

“Are you?” she asked, turning to look up into my eyes.

I looked at her sad lovely face, and knew her question was serious. “Yes, my lady,” I said gently.

“Then tomorrow,” she said bitterly, “kill them all. Kill all the Danes. Do that for me, Lord Uhtred,” she touched my hand with the tips of her fingers, “kill them all.”

She had loved a Dane and she had lost him to a blade, and now she would kill them all.

There are three spinners at the root of Yggdrasil, the Tree of Life, and they weave our threads, and those spinners had made a skein of purest gold for Æthelflæd’s life, but in those years they wove that bright thread into a much darker cloth. The three spinners see our future. The gift of the gods to humankind is that we cannot see where the threads will go.

I heard songs from the Danes camped across the river.

And tomorrow I would draw them to the old hill by the river. And there kill them.